Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/77

Rh A second note of Lassalle's gospel was an unwavering belief in the inevitability and desirability of political democracy. Here he was one with the British. He wished redress of workingmen's grievances; he championed productive co-operative societies as the goal of social reform. But in his opinion co-operative societies and redress of grievances could come only by means of state aid and state action, and the assistance of the State would be forthcoming only when a class-conscious proletariat should become a political force, and the only way in which the proletarians could exert direct and commanding influence would be through universal manhood suffrage. To the very end Lassalle held fast to his conviction that the demands of the General Association of German Workingmen should be limited to this one point: "Universal suffrage in order to obtain state help for productive cooperative societies".

When Lassalle preached his simple gospel, Prussia, it must be remembered, was in the throes of a desperate constitutional conflict. On one side was the Conservative government, headed since September, 1862, by Bismarck, backed by the Junkers and lauded by the Evangelical clergy, a government determined not only to effect thoroughgoing military reforms but also to safeguard the ideals of and the Kreuz Zeitung—the Christian State, divineright monarchy, "historic rights", benevolent and bureaucratic paternalism, invocation of the God of Might. On the other side was the Progressive majority in the House of Representatives, whose ideal of monarchy was much nearer to the traditions of the British Hanoverians and of the French Orleanists than to those of the Prussian Hohenzollerns, and whose ideal of economic society approximated that of the Manchester school rather than that of Hegel or of Fichte; their immediate programme was, of course, to assure "liberty" to the individual and constitutional parliamentary government to Prussia. Had all the forces opposed to Bismarck and his Conservative régime been able to co-operate, the outcome of the struggle might have been quite different. But, as has often happened, divisions among its opponents and mutual recriminations between their camps proved a veritable godsend to the government. The Progressives distrusted if they did not despise the Socialist workingmen. Lassalle hit back manfully; he